Getting my cholera felt. Redux.

Turned out nice again!
Bullet. 2007 Goa. © John Gladdy All rights reserved

Once upon a time in a land far far away a handsome young prince set out on a journey to slay a drag……oops!

wrong story.

What I meant to say was, several years ago I went and did the ‘travel around India’ thing and before I went I set up a blog to record the whole wonderful, spiritually invigorating life affirming …ness of it. Unfortunately my blogging skills were even less than they are now (no, really. ), the blogging platform was, lets say, rudimentary, and while I could always find an internet cafe somewhere, many of them ‘lacked’ something. That something quite often being a working internet connection, or sometimes a computer. The point of all this though is that the Internet is endowed with a very good memory, and recently I noticed that my little blog was still very much in existence. And reading it I even thought it quite amusing.

Monday, 16 July 2007

बोम्बय तो गोवा थे हार्ड वय

I think its monday, but i cant be sure. Only five days and already im losing track of date(although i know what the time is).
Where to start…., Mumbai.
You think the guy with one leg and no nose holding out his ‘good’ arm for money is bad here until, round the corner, you meet the guy with no legs doing the same, and he’s positively tame compared to the guy with no arms or legs, and some really bad acne thing going on, being pushed along on a trolley by a child who looks like she hasnt eaten in days. Slum upon slum upon slum, thread through and around the more affluent(ie; those with roofs)parts of the city filling every available gap.Millions of bodies.A black and white photographers dream.
Not wanting to do the tourist thing i managed to find a good guide who was willing(for a price) to take me around the ‘interesting’ parts of town that i wouldnt otherwise be able to reach. the slum cities, thieves markets, streets of hookers.
I shot like crazy, and made use of the opputunity to get really close to the people i was shooting.
When i find somewhere with a computer not from the ice age i will post some pics up.(dont hold your breath, im not)

QUOTE FOR THE DAY
“hello im a tourist with heaps of money in my wallet, how much is that incredibly cheap looking wooden elephant key ring?”

See what I mean? No? Please yourself.

Anyway this is a belated attempt to fill in a couple of gaps here and there and bore you senseless with yet more cliched travel shots…YAAAY!

that was my first post and Mumbai really was like that for me. Just an incredible hustle and crush of humanity. And then little fragments of calm in the chaos.

Boy. Nariman Point fishing village Mumbai.

Nariman Point, Mumbai.

I had a guide, I had a camera and a sack full of film…….. and I had no clue what I was doing.
I lasted about five days in Mumbai and then hightailed it for Goa….in the middle of the monsoon….and hired a death trap motorbike.(which I loved dearly). After Goa I think I went To Kerala. I know that at Fort Cochin I first realised my stomach was worse than I had first thought. Weathered that storm in a bamboo room at the back of a hostel. Then It was Bangalore, Mangalore, Mysore, Koorg…numerous small towns and villages and nameless hotels, Overnight trains and cheap cigarettes.Finished up in Chennai, hopped across to the Andaman islands, back to chennai….and then …..THAILAND

Koorg. 2007 © John Gladdy All rights reserved

Wednesday, 18 July 2007
GOA. …………and not a hippie in sight.
I have to say, Goa is pretty deserted(tourist wise) at the moment, which makes me honcho no.1 for every hustler within a twenty mile radius. It’s nice and quiet and i have a nice little royal enfield bullet parked out the front of my little hotel. Trouble is, this place is boring the shit out of me. There is just so litle to do, which would be nice if there was a beach to do it on, but with the monsoon raging thats kind of a no no. Im already missing the beggars and slums of bombay, guess im just a bit twisted that way, plus, there just isnt a picture here that i can find that doesnt make me cringe. But…im gonna stick it out for a couple of weeks, read a lot of books, pootle around on the bike and eat a lot……….then head back to the slums.
Finally found an internet cafe that has a halfway decent pc(with dvd drive and photoshop no less) so am gonna spend a day editing pictures to post.
hasta la bye bye as they dont say in goanese.

© John Gladdy All rights reserved

© John Gladdy All rights reserved

Saturday, 21 July 2007
saturday maybe.

I think its saturday. cant be quite sure though.

really should have bought the laptop. still just poodling around on the bike. booked an extra week at a hotel on the beach to get the room discount(a fiver a day..extortionate ) think i’ll head up into the mountains after that and see some nature. time passes slowly here, not a lot to do. taking lots of pictures, mainly they suck, but the odd one seems okay. Now i just need a workstaion to edit on. I will not be holding my breath.

Goa 2007. © John Gladdy All rights reserved

Monday, 30 July 2007
A Taste of Paradise……………….hmmmm!

Calangute beach, Goa.
Its like bombay, with sand. All the beaches here seem to be the same, the bit the tourists stroll around on is all palm tree heaven. 50 yards back, all the way along its like this(probably cant see it to well in this pic, but it looks like a council tip). Left Goa the other day, cant remember what day, but whatever. Tried Bangalore for a few, way too manic, so have bailed out on the train to Mysore. Much more like it. Rather short of limbless people to exploit, sorry photograph, but then they were getting a bit like old buicks in havana. The novelty really does wear of quickly. That being said, i dont think im ready for macro lesser winged niblet shots yet, but who knows?

Mysore. 2007 © John Gladdy All rights reserved

Not much else to say really, think i will stick around here for a few days, see the sights, eat the food, ride around in the little put-put things they have as taxis . All driven by blind people by the way. They really are quite safe, as long as you dont get in them.

Calangute. 2007 © John Gladdy All rights reserved

So obviously, I didnt really follow through with the whole ‘travel diary’ thing back then. It was a strange trip though. After about six weeks every hotel and town and village looks the same. The train journeys all fold into one.even the flying cockroaches and the enormous wasps become like ‘Yeah, Whatever’.

Somewhere in India 2007 ©John Gladdy All rights reserved

I do have a vague recollection of a big Ayurvedic massage guy up in the mountain village I was stuck in asking me if I wanted a penis massage (you know its time to leave when a giant in a rubber apron asks you that), and I remember two weeks of ‘The joys of dysentary’ in Kerala somewhere, but a lot of the rest is just fragments squashed into a whole……cant wait to go back again really.